Keep the Wolf from the Door
by KanasuKarasu
Summary: A young girl in a desperate situation experiences a chance encounter that lands her in the shoes of a recently deceased altruist.
1. First Impressions

_Content warning for sexual situations._

* * *

Sada was lucky. Of course, in her mind, this could just as easily indicate an overabundance of _bad_ luck. Luck was luck, after all, and she had learned not to assume…

Her first impression of the six members of the RFA was the same as any tight-knit, incestuous, xenophobic social circle, and Sada had come to be wary of such groups over the years, as they tended to run on drama and shared history.

But, on the other hand, the members of the RFA took it for granted that she would stay at Rika's apartment if she opted to help them throw fancy parties, and Rika's apartment was most definitely a step-up from the shithole she'd been living in. Plus, apparently, she didn't even have to pay rent!

Yeah, she was lucky.

She checked the messenger sparingly at first, and she wasn't particularly verbose when she was signed on. They hardly noticed, though, as they seemed to have plenty to say, even if it was about the same things over and over and over and…

She stared at her laptop screen now, somewhat entranced by the exchange between the actor who was super into himself and the inaccessible rich one. It seemed like any time these two were in the chatroom together, the latter would say something completely out-of-touch with the common man and _every single time_ the actor guy would lose his temper with him and waste all this energy getting all _eggy_ about it. It _did_ annoy Sada that the suit seemed incapable of empathizing with those of lesser means, but the aggressive use of caps lock certainly wasn't going to teach the guy to be more considerate of the less fortunate.

ZEN: _I'll never understand this guy._

Jumin: _And I'll never understand someone who does not appreciate the grace and elegance of Elizabeth III._

Ah, yes…the cat. Sada never realized such a benign thing could ever be such a point of contention between friends, or even acquaintances.

ZEN: _Don't mention that furball now!_

ZEN: _My eyes are watering just thinking about it…_

ZEN: _Damn it!_

Jumin: _Sada, how do_ you _feel about cats?_

Sada briefly wondered whether she should answer or just pretend she was away from the computer.

Sada: _Well…I'm also allergic to cats, but_

Sada: _I tend to like them, anyway._

Jumin: _I knew V had a good eye for people._

ZEN: _You're an animal-loving girl._

Sada: _My family had some cats when I was growing up, but they mostly stayed outside._

Sada: _We found out one of them had three different families feeding him every day!_

Jumin: _Letting Elizabeth III roam outside…_

Jumin: _Unthinkable._

Jumin: _What if she got lost, or hurt, or rained on?_

Sada: _Er…I wasn't suggesting you leave a house cat outside._

Sada: _She probably_ would _get hurt if she's not used to it._

ZEN: _You're very caring, Sada._

Sada: _Not particularly…_

Sada: _But it's important to take good care of your pets._

Sada: _If you can't care for your pet properly, you shouldn't have one._

Jumin: _You're quite right._

Jumin: _Caring for a pet is a responsibility not everyone is equipped to handle._

Jumin: _And Elizabeth III_

Jumin: _is in another league entirely._

Jumin: _Only a prodigious individual such as myself would be able to adequately care for her._

ZEN: _Arrogant much?_

Jumin: _I feel as though you have no room to call me arrogant…_

Sada was tired of the bickering. She excused herself and returned to her work. She managed to stay on-task for a couple of hours when her phone rang. She answered it distractedly. It was Jumin, calling to talk to her about the importance of good nutrition…?

No, it was the other guy: the hacker! Sada laughed. He'd caught her off guard, and his playful mannerisms were surprisingly disarming. He talked to her about his love for Elizabeth III, or, as he called her, "Elly," and his laughter was pleasant to hear.

He left again in a hurry, saying he had a lot of work to contend with. Sada remembered that she did as well, but she was sorry their conversation had to end so soon.

 _That_ one…Seven… _he_ was intriguing. Sada had never known a hacker, but that wasn't really what interested her. It was his… _strangeness._ The members of the RFA had yet to encounter Sada's own strangeness. She tended to hide it in certain situations, particularly in precarious social situations that had the potential to affect her general well-being.

The truth was, Sada was "crazy." She was _not_ a quirky hippie chick, an obsessive ex, or an eccentric genius. She was actually schizophrenic, and this was a significant contributing factor when it came to her wariness of others. Typically, others thought of people like her as mass murderers or serial killers, volatile and untrustworthy. Sada acknowledged that she had delusions, but so did everyone. Literally everyone in the world believed _something_ crazy; she was convinced of that. As for the hallucinations, people took _drugs_ to try to induce the kinds of things she saw involuntarily, but _she_ was still the crazy one; she was singled out.

But someone like Seven…gave her the slightest hope that maybe…maybe there really could be someone out there who could _understand_ her, or at least someone who might _try._

Sada sighed. She was jumping the gun, and she knew it. She had a tendency to get attached to people prematurely, and it had landed her in trouble before. Seven was just a weird guy in a chatroom. There was really no point getting her hopes up. She just had to organize this party like they wanted, and keep looking for a way to get back _home_ in the meantime.

* * *

Over the next several days, Sada watched the chatroom more and more. She thought of it as gathering intelligence, in a fashion, but truthfully…she kept catching herself hoping that he would be online.

Other members began to grow on her, too. Sada felt a lot of empathy for Jaehee. Sada certainly knew what it was like to work under an unreasonably demanding boss, but she personally felt that Jaehee possessed much greater patience and professionalism than Sada ever had. Now that Sada occasionally felt the urge to yell at Jumin for tormenting Jaehee, she began to understand Zen better as well. When it came to Zen, she didn't particularly mind that he was so into himself. Sada generally thought it was nice when people had good self-esteem, but he seemed to be under the impression that everyone should live more like he does, despite acknowledging that the others existed under different circumstances than he did. In that way, it was hypocritical for him to criticize Jumin for not being mindful of others. That was _probably_ why they argued so much; they were too similar.

As for Jumin, it was hard for Sada to feel sorry for someone who lived in a mansion with hordes of servants and ate gourmet cooking for every meal while people living on the street were lucky if they could find clothes warm enough to prevent them from freezing to death…but she tried. He had a handful of legitimate grievances, namely the relatively recent suicide of his close friend…

That's right…they were all still coping with Rika's suicide in their own ways, and Sada had to be considerate of that. It sounded as though Rika was a very warm presence in all of their lives, and Sada knew that feeling of loss too well.

Yoosung: _It's hard to believe someone like that_

Yoosung: _would take her own life…_

Sada: _I didn't know her_

Sada: _but it sounds as though she was very compassionate._

Sada: _Usually, compassionate people like that_

Sada: _are able to understand others so well_

Sada: _because they know how it feels to struggle._

Yoosung: _I know she had a hard time growing up…_

Yoosung: _I just didn't know it still weighed on her so much._

Sada: _People who are used to being in pain_

Sada: _become good at hiding that pain._

Sada: _It's not your fault that you didn't know._

Sada: _You probably didn't know because she didn't want you to._

Sada: _She probably didn't want anyone to know…_

Yoosung: _Thank you for saying so, Sada…_

Yoosung: _I just wish_

Yoosung: _things had gone differently._

Sada: _Yeah…_

Sada: _I wish I could have met her._

Yoosung's grief was the most obvious, but a closer look showed that they were all still struggling, even this V person… Sada had a suspicion that he was struggling the most, considering his absence. He seemed to be cutting himself off from his friends, insisting upon suffering in solitude. He was a mysterious figure, and Sada did not feel comfortable asking the others about him in his absence.

So, Sada didn't bother with it. If he wanted to be alone, she could understand that. After all, he had found someone who loved and understood him, and then he lost her. Perhaps he had given up hope trying to find that again. Perhaps it was a chore now, trying to communicate with people who had no chance of understanding him the way she had.

This is how Sada's involvement with the RFA began.


	2. Seven's Discovery

It seemed as though everyone was fond of the girl. It wasn't a problem. If anything, it ensured that the organization of the party would go smoothly.

So why did it bother him so much?

Jumin wasn't exactly one to waste time on sorting out his emotions. Dwelling on them typically only served to give them greater strength, so it bothered him that he found himself so preoccupied with it. No matter how he looked at it, though, there was something _off_ about the girl, and apparently no one else noticed it.

She was nice enough; that wasn't the problem. She liked cats, which was more than he could say for Zen. She seemed to handle the potential guests well, possibly as well as Rika had.

Rika… The others were always comparing the girl to Rika, and it bothered him. In his opinion, their differences couldn't be more obvious. Perhaps the problem wasn't Sada at all, but the other members' readiness to substitute Rika for her _._ Did they really think it was possible for someone as unique as Rika to be replaced by this random foreigner?

In fairness to Jaehee and Seven, the former was not as close to Rika as the rest of them had been, and Seven did manage to treat Sada a lot differently than he treated Rika. He also seemed to get along with the girl better than any of them.

707: _Huzzah~_

Sada: _SEVEN!_

Sada: _God Seven, of the Seven Levels of the Celestial Realm!_

Sada: _Come to grace us with his effervescent eminence!_

Jumin: _Hello…_

707: _Jumin! The cool guy in a suit!_

Sada: _Tall, dark, and handsome…_

Sada: _…but enough about his father!_

707: _Ba-dum-tss!_

Jumin: _So you're like the rest of the gold diggers…_

Jumin: _I suppose women are predictable in that way._

Sada: _Gold diggers! That seems disproportionate._

Sada: _At least your dad's girlfriends aren't committing genocide._

Jumin: _How do we go from gold digging to genocide?_

707: _Don't you know, Jumin?_

707: _About the 19_ _th_ _century California Gold Rush?_

Jumin: _…_

Jumin: _Why would I need to know about that?_

Sada: _I'm just saying_

Sada: _a desire for financial security_

Sada: _is not exactly on par with the death and environmental devastation of gold digging!_

Jumin: _It's just an expression…_

Sada: _Yeah, but so is "Jumin Han is a bigot!"_

Jumin: _I'm confused… Did I offend you in some way?_

Sada: _What? No, it's just an expression!_

Jumin: _I'm not familiar…_

707: _It's obviously because_

707: _you implied all women are the same._

707: _Isn't that discriminatory?_

Sada: _That would make you_

Sada: _a discriminal!_

707: _You're under arrest!_

Jumin: _…_

Jumin: _In any case_

Jumin: _I must return to work._

 **Jumin has left the chatroom.**

Jumin signed off, feeling mildly frustrated. This girl was nothing like Rika.

* * *

Seven found himself glancing at the security feed often. He told himself that he was just excited by the prospect of having a new member in the RFA and hosting parties again. But, if he was being honest, it was more than that… Sada was…unique. The other members were nice, but she was the only one with the patience and creativity to play along with him, the only one who seemed to have _fun_ with him. Aside from that, she was less predictable than the others. Less predictable than him, even. As he watched the CCTV, he occasionally caught her making a spectacle of herself, seemingly for his benefit, moonwalking along the front hallway and making silly faces at the camera. Clearly, she suspected that he was watching, and he was finding it more and more difficult to look away.

707: _I reviewed the chat history between you and this "Unknown" person._

707: _I'm surprised they knew that old saying._

Sada: _Do you mean that creepy thing he said about listening to old men, or whatever?_

707: _Yes, that one! I haven't heard that saying in years._

Sada: _You mean it's a real saying?_

707: _A pretty old one, I think._

Sada: _A pretty_ gross _one. And I thought it was off-putting that he assumed I was younger than him._

707: _You should have listened to your intuition, since he turned out to be a hacker!_

707: _He probably knows almost as much about you as I do._

Sada: _How much_ do _you know about me, exactly?_

707: _Pretty much everything by now! I_ am _a genius hacker!_

707: _Were you aware?_

Sada: _Yeah, I think I might have heard_ something _along those lines._

Sada: _I am, curious, though…_

707: _Hmm?_

Sada: _Back when my first best friend got a computer, when we were both ten-ish years old, she and I wrote a story about our favorite T.V. show and posted it online…_

Sada: _And it was pretty embarrassing…_

707: _Go on…_

Sada: _And…I was wondering if you…you know, found it?_

707: _I don't believe it…_

707: _I_

707: _The Great Seven-Zero-Seven_

707: _have_ failed.

Sada: _That's a relief! I was never able to take that down because my friend never gave me the account info._

707: _I assure you, I shall not rest until I find this story._

707: _What show was it?_

Sada: _I'm not telling you! What kind of genius hacker are you if you can't figure that out, anyway?_

707: _What do I get if I find it on my own_

707: and _take it down for you?_

Sada: _If you manage to do all that, I guess I'll owe you…_

Sada: _How about I'll do whatever you want for 24 hours?_

707: _..._

707: _**Whatever I want?**_

Sada: _Aside from pervy stuff, of course._

707: _I was thinking more along the lines of cleaning._

Sada: That _I can do. You have a deal!_

* * *

Seven smirked to himself and began his search. He already knew quite a lot about the girl. She was a 20-year-old foreigner from the United States, and she had only moved to South Korea about a year ago; he had no idea why. She had dark hair and brown eyes, like most people Seven knew, but slightly darker skin than most Koreans. To his surprise, he discovered that her grandmother had been a Puerto Rican activist in the 70's, so Sada was definitely part Puerto Rican. He also found out that her father had been committed to a psych ward in his late high school years.

He felt bad knowing so many personal things about her, but his top priority was ensuring the safety of the RFA and its members. To do that, he needed to be thorough in his investigation of the girl.

And yet, somehow, he had missed something important! _Fanfiction!_ He was dying to know what show it was that she and her friend liked so much that they decided to write a story about it.

But then, before he could complete his search, he found something even more shocking…

* * *

"Sada," Seven spoke into his phone. "Are you busy?"

"Nothing I can't pause. What's up? Did you find the story already?"

Seven hesitated. "I…uh…sent you an e-mail…with some stuff I found online."

"Oh, wait… I actually have my e-mail open now…"

There was a long silence and Seven wondered if he should be doing this.

"Oh," Sada's voice spoke. "Yeah. That."

"Did you know about this?"

"I did," she said. "It was actually my job for a while…"

"Your job…?" Seven was momentarily speechless. If he had to guess what kind of job Sada had, he would never have guessed anything like this…

He looked back at the photo on his screen. He had found it in a thread on a private forum where several users had been asking for Sada's personal information. It was a picture of Sada in a maid costume that had been modified to show the optimal amount of skin. Her large, velvety eyes expressed longing and her enormous breasts were barely contained by the flimsy fabric of the costume. Seven looked away again quickly, suddenly realizing he was becoming overly-excited by the image.

"Seven? Are you all right?"

"I'm okay, just—"

"Do you want to kick me out of the RFA?"

"No," he assured her before he could think better of it. "No, I don't want to…" he trailed off, thinking it over. It would likely be trouble for the RFA if the party guests knew Sada had had a job like this, wouldn't it? At the same time, though…Seven didn't _want_ Sada to leave. It didn't seem fair. His own career was morally dubious, so how could he judge her for this? At least _she_ probably never hurt anyone by doing this job. Seven couldn't claim the same.

"Maybe I should have told you from the beginning," Sada spoke. "I used a different name back then, so people don't usually know it's me."

"Do you still…?"

"Oh, I stopped about a month ago, when I got a job as a CAD draftsman."

"Oh…"

"Seven?"

"Yeah?"

There was a brief pause, then she asked, "What do you think?"

Seven felt his face flush. _"Wh-What?"_

"About the situation?" she said teasingly. "Is it really okay if I stay?"

"It's okay," said Seven, though he felt a tug of guilt. He needed to tell V about it, at the very least. A strange part of him hated the thought of sharing this information with anyone, especially another man. A strange part of him wanted to keep this entirely to himself…

When he hung up the phone, he couldn't help looking at the photo again. Was that really the same girl he saw on the CCTV every day? He had never noticed before just how perfectly proportioned she was… Of course, she was usually wearing a lot more layers…

Seven abruptly realized how hard he was. He had only found a handful of photos of her like this. He flipped through them now, wondering if there were any more. He stopped on a picture of her sliding the spaghetti strap of a white tank top down her shoulder as she stared into the camera seductively. The top was semi-transparent and she wasn't wearing a bra, so her nipples were visible underneath the fabric. None of the photos showed her fully topless, and Seven felt disgusted by his palpable disappointment.

 _What was he doing?_ He realized he would never be able to focus on his work until he took care of the urge inspired by Sada's photos. He got up and made his way to the shower. As he jerked off under the hot water, he tried to think of something, _anything_ but that girl, but it was no use. All he could picture was how her breasts would look as he thrust into her, imagining them spilling out of her white tank top.

When he finished, he returned to his computer and logged onto the RFA chatroom. Sada was there, chatting with Zen and Jaehee. Just the sight of her username made Seven blush.

This was not good.


End file.
